[Illustration: PLATE XI.—PALMA VECCHIO (1480-1528) VENETIAN SCHOOL No. 1399.—THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS, WITH A FEMALE DONOR (L’Annonce aux Bergers) The Virgin is seated and holds the Infant Jesus on a cradle formed of basket-work; she wears a red robe with blue and green draperies and a white veil, under which her brown hair is seen. To her right St. Joseph is seated leaning on his staff; before him a shepherd boy kneels in adoration to the Infant Christ. To the left kneels the _donatrice_, her hands folded. In the ruined shed behind the Holy Family are the ox and ass. To the right of the composition is a landscape background in which several figures appear. A small group of angels in the sky. Painted in oil on canvas. 4 ft. 7 in. × 6 ft. 11 in. (1·40 × 2·10.)] Titian, who was a native of Cadore, left his home at an early age for Venice. He was first placed as a pupil of Sebastian Zuccato, a mosaicist and perhaps a painter; he then seems to have worked in the studio of Gentile Bellini before passing into that of Giovanni, where he met Giorgione. Titian, like Giotto, has been called “the Father of modern painting.” The early Florentine had provided his countrymen with a set of fundamental principles of art, but it remained for the illustrious Venetian to endow his contemporaries and artistic descendants with a more complete equipment and a new sense of pictorial effect. The profound impression exerted by Giorgione on the youthful Titian inspired him to achieve those idyllic compositions and “poesies” which stand out so prominently among the world’s pictures. Titian’s earliest picture in the Louvre is the _Virgin and Child, with St. Stephen, St. Ambrose, and St. Maurice_ (No. 1577), of about 1508-1510. It is very reminiscent of a picture by Titian in the Vienna Gallery (No. 166), in which he has substituted St. Jerome for St. Ambrose.